Abortion+Patient+and+Fish+-+Equal+Before+the+Law

Dateline 6/19/00
 * Abortion Patient and Fish: Equal Before the Law**

//"I've represented 17 people for murder, and I've never had anyone so angry as these people were over a halibut. Everyone in the whole South Bay wanted to kill him."//

If you judge by the sentences handed down for killing them, "Big Mama" the halibut and Sharon Hamptlon the abortion patient are equal before the law. The public outcry -- and the remorse shown by those involved -- was far greater over the death of the fish, mother to countless halibut spawn, than over the death of the abortion patient, mother to a three-year-old boy.

One party outraged by the hue and cry over the fish, and lack of hue and cry over the dead woman, is Jack Schuler, the attorney representing Sharon Hamplon's survivors. He alerted the probation department to this miscarriage of justice:

[|Letter and enclosure] [no longer available]

The letter itself clarifies exactly what it is @Bruce Steir did to deserve prosecution for murder. Anybody who reads that letter and still thinks poor Bruce is being picked on should go speak to Sharon Hamptlon's family. Look her mother and her father and her orphaned son in the eye and explain your opinion, if you dare. (Sadly, there probably are those who //would// dare to look the family in the eye and tell them to try to see it from poor persecuted Dr. Steir's perspective.)

But the attached clipping about Big Mama speaks volumes. (Scroll down to the bottom of the Web page to read it.) Big Mama was a 25-year-old halibut. Sharon Hamptlon was a 26-year-old woman. And the man who killed Big Mama got a stiffer sentence -- after showing more remorse -- than the man who killed Sharon Hamptlon.

I opened this article with a quote from the attorney who represented the fish-killer: "I've represented 17 people for murder, and I've never had anyone so angry as these people were over a halibut. Everyone in the whole South Bay wanted to kill him."

And all anybody wanted to do to Bruce Steir was prosecute him for murder, but //we// are over reacting.